Making sense of survival: refining the treatment of state preferences in neorealist theory

The assumption that ‘states' primary goal is survival’ lies at the heart of the neorealist paradigm. A careful examination of the assumption, however, reveals that neorealists draw upon a number of distinct interpretations of the ‘survival assumption’ that are then treated as if they are the same, pointing towards conceptual problems that surround the treatment of state preferences. This article offers a specification that focuses on two questions that highlight the role and function of the survival assumption in the neorealist logic: (i) what do states have to lose if they fail to adopt self-help strategies?; and (ii) how does concern for relevant losses motivate state behaviour and affect international outcomes? Answering these questions through the exploration of governing elites' sensitivity towards regime stability and territorial integrity of the state, in turn, addresses the aforementioned conceptual problems. This specification has further implications for the debates among defensive and offensive realists, potential extensions of the neorealist logic beyond the Westphalian states, and the relationship between neorealist theory and policy analysis.

6 Waltz, Theory, p. 66, empasis added. Furthermore, Waltz implies that neorealism can have explanatory power whenever the system in question is anarchic and comprised of units such as ‘tribes, petty principalities, empires, nations, or street gangs’. Ibid, p. 67.

7 In fact, both anarchy and survival assumptions are built on a foundational premise: states, which are in turn assumed to be sovereign and ‘functionally alike’ units, are the key actors in world politics and they could be treated as unitary actors.

16 On Hobbes and IR theory, see Williams, Michael C., ‘Hobbes and International Relations: A Reconsideration’, International Organization, 50:2 (1996), pp. 213–36; Hobson, John M., The State and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 21–2.

19 Waltz, Theory, pp. 88–93; Fearon, ‘Domestic Politics’. The term ‘firm’ is used more than 100 times in TIP. For a similar approach to states, see Bean, Richard, ‘War and the Birth of the Nation State’, Journal of Economic History, 33 (1973), pp. 203–21.

29 Ibid., p. 689. For an earlier and similar approach, see Krasner, Stephen D., Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).

30Fazal, Tanisha M., State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

31 Fazal, State Death: The Politics, p. 25.

32 For example, in the most important revisiting of neorealist theory since Mearsheimer's Tragedy, Glaser does not even cite Fazal. Glaser, Rational Theory.

33 Even when realist scholars challenge TIP's original treatment of state preferences, the meaning of survival remains unproblematised. See, for example, Schweller, Randall, ‘Bandwagoning For Profit: Bringing The Revisionist State Back In’, International Security, 19:1 (1994), pp. 72–107. Also see Brooks, Stephen, ‘Dueling Realisms’, International Organization, 51:3 (1997), pp. 449–53.

34 Mearsheimer, Tragedy, p. 31.

35 Waltz, Theory, p. 92. Charles Glaser slightly misquotes this statement by replacing ‘motive’ with ‘assumption’ such that the quotation appears ‘the survival assumption is taken as the ground of action in a world where the security of states is not assured’. Glaser, Rational Theory, p. 37, fn. 39.

40 A largely accepted definition of security would read ‘the probability that one's core interests will not be challenged or violated over some reasonable time span’. Snyder, Glenn H., ‘Mearsheimer's World: Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security’, International Security, 27:1 (2002), p. 153. However, the definition itself suffers from ‘elastic’ concepts; ‘core interests’ can be defined as almost anything and how long a ‘reasonable time span’ is left unclear. Probably the best contemporary analysis of the use and abuse of the concept of security so far is Baldwin, David, ‘The Concept of Security’, Review of International Studies, 23:1 (1997), pp. 5–26. Also see Walt, Stephen, ‘The Renaissance of Security Studies’, International Studies Quarterly, 35:2 (1991), p. 213.

45 See, for example, Teschke, Benno, ‘Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages: History and Theory’, International Organization, 52:2 (1998), pp. 325–58.

46 The seminal work on the territorial state in IR literature is Herz, John H., ‘Rise and Demise of The Territorial State’, World Politics, 9:4 (1957), pp. 473–93. Also see Spruyt, Hendrik, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

47 I take nation-state as a ‘state that is controlled by members of one dominant nation, in whose interests the state functions’. Kaiser, Robert J., ‘Geography’, The Encyclopedia of Nationalism, Volume 1 (San Diego: Academic Press, 2001), p. 315.

48Luard, Evan, War in International Society: A Study in International Sociology (London: I. B. Tauris, 1986).

49 Mark Zacher argues that territorial integrity has become an important ‘norm’ for states only following World War II. Zacher, Mark, ‘The Territorial Integrity Norm’, International Organization, 55:2 (2001), pp. 215–50.

51 For a similar realist interpretation of the origins of the European Union, see Rosato, Sebastian, Europe United: Power Politics and the Making of the European Community (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

52 Paul, ‘Sovereignty’, p. 221.

53 See, for example, Mearsheimer and Walt, ‘An Unnecessary War’.

54 On this distinction, see Snyder, Glenn H., ‘Mearsheimer's World – Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay’, International Security, 27:1 (2002), pp. 149–73.

55 Brooks, ‘Dueling’.

56 Different theories building on different interpretations are not, as many neorealists claim, making the same assumptions. Powell, ‘Game Theory’, p. 777.

57 On the importance of conceptual clarity for generating theories, see Laudan, Larry, Progress and its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Johnson, James D., ‘Conceptual Problems as Obstacles to Theoretical Progress in Political Science: Four Decades of Political Culture Research’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 15 (2003), pp. 87–115.

58 Waltz, Theory, p. 92.

59 Luard, War; Kagan, Donald, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1995). My argument here is not that honour, however defined, plays no role in the conduct of world politics today. On honour and IR, O'Neill, Barry, Honor, Symbols, and War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).

60 See, for example, Gilpin, War and Change; Wolforth, William, ‘Unipolarity, Status Competition and Great Power War’, World Politics, 611 (2009), pp. 28–57.

62Rosecrance, Richard, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986).

63 Mearsheimer, Tragedy, p. 31.

64 Note that these two elements can be thought of as ‘minimum’ requirements for what states are concerned about.

65 On ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ states, see Migdal, Joel, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). On infrastructural power, see Mann, Michael, The Sources of Social Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

66 The dotted frontier represents a ‘weak state’ where autonomy is strongest in the capitol but gradually declines as we move towards the borders. Such configuration would be in line with, for example, Jeffrey Herbst's representation of ‘power gradient’ in most African states or the relatively weak ‘infrastructural power’ of the territorial states of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The frontier to the farthest left, in relation, would refer to so-called failing or failed states such as Somalia circa 1991 where, despite the existence of internationally recognised borders, state's authority barely extends outside the center and does not exist at all in some regions. Herbst, Jeffrey, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). For a similar approach, see Atzili, Boaz, Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

67Wright, Quincy, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 154.

69 On Weber's reading of the modern state, see Swedberg, Richard, Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 56; Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 30–1; Mastanduno et al., ‘Toward a Realist Theory’.

70 Glaser, ‘Realists’, p. 55.

71 Note that such specification does not mean that neorealist framework should be replaced with a focus on the ‘private costs and benefits’ that leaders look into when making their foreign policy choices. For an example of such approach, see Chiozza, Giacomo and Goemans, Hein. E., Leaders and International Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 4.

73 On this issue, see Byman, Daniel, and Polack, Kenneth, ‘Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In’, International Security, 25:4 (2001), pp. 10–46.

74 Howes suggests that an emphasis on ‘regime survival’ can be traced to Machiavelli. Howes, ‘When States Choose to Die’, p. 669.

75Waltz, Kenneth N., ‘The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory’, in Rotberg, Robert I. and Rabb, Theodore K. (eds), The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 39.

76 I define microfoundations in this context as causal explanations of ‘the behavior of the political actors under study’. On this definition, see Achen, Chris, ‘Toward a New Political Methodology: Microfoundations and ART’, Annual Review of Political Science, 5 (2002), p. 437. Also, see Little, Daniel, Microfoundations, Method and Causation: On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998).

77 Stephen Walt claims that neorealism needs to pay further attention to developing microfoundations that would be consistent with the neorealist programme. Walt, Stephen, ‘The Enduring Relevance of the Realist Tradition’, in Katznelson, Ira and Milner, Helen (eds), The State of the Discipline (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002), pp. 197–230.

78 Chiozza and Goemans. p. 5. Also, see Goemans, Hein E., ‘Fighting for Survival: The Fate of Leaders and the Duration of War’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44:5 (2000), pp. 555–79. Chiozza and Goemans' arguments are inspired by and in fact improve upon Bueno de Mesquita et al,'s ‘selectorate’ theory. Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Morrow, James D., Siverson, Randolph M., and Smith, Alastair, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).

79 Owen, The Clash, p. 2.

80 Gellner, Nations, p. 1. In this context, I define nation as a ‘socially mobilized body of individuals, believing – or imagining – themselves to be united by some set of characteristics that differentiate them from outsiders, striving to create or maintain their own state’. Haas, Ernst B., ‘What is Nationalism and Why Should We Study It?’, International Organization, 40:3 (1986), p. 726.

101 Note that my claim is not that neorealists are missing such insights. My argument is that, without specific conceptualisation of the survival assumption, it is not clear if these insights follow from the neorealist logic or are merely ad hoc modifications to it.

102 Examples are too many to list here, but some are soft balancing, balance of threat/risk/interest, omnibalancing, bandwagoning for profit, piling-on, and leash-slipping. See Pape, Robert Anthony, ‘Soft Balancing against the United States’, International Security, 30:1 (2005), pp. 7–45; Walt, Origins; Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., ‘Power Politics and the Balance of Risk: Hypotheses on Great Power Intervention in the Periphery’, Political Psychology, 25:2 (2004), pp. 177–211; Schweller, Randall L., Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2006); David, Steven R., ‘Explaining Third World Alignment’, World Politics, 43:2 (1991), pp. 233–56; Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning for Profit’; Layne, Christopher, ‘The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment’, International Security, 31:2 (2006), pp. 7–41.

103 See, for example, Vasquez, John A., ‘The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz's Balancing Proposition’, The American Political Science Review, 91:4 (1997), pp. 899–912.

104 On these issues, see Collier, David and Levitsky, Steven, ‘Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research’, World Politics, 49:3 (1997), pp. 430–51.